I am reading a new book. A New Kind of Normal by Carol Kent. As I was doing some shopping therapy, ( I hate to admit that this is my chosen method of re-focusing my thoughts.) I came across this book in my local discount store. I couldn’t believe that, as I was reading the jacket…I was reading a summery of the life I am currently living. As I am searching for a new normal in my own life…I am curious to see what Kent, as a Christian author, has to say.
This book is for those of us whose life has not gone exactly to our plan or expectations. As I am sitting here sifting through my mental list of friends. I am not sure who this book would not apply to. Have you had a job loss? a failed marriage? a scary medical diagnosis? a loss of a relative? Anything that you would consider a major event in your life that has changed your journey’s course forever? Sometimes even the “good” things in our life can take us on an unexpected turn. Has your journey been affected by a new job? an unexpected pregnancy? finding a long lost friend? All of these things change the reality that we once called “normal”.
Kent quotes one of my all time favorite writers – Ken Gire. (He wrote Intimate Moments with the Savior, Learning to Love…which I have read over and over.) Ken says, “When suffering shatters the carefully kept vase that is our lives, God stoops to pick up the pieces. But he doesn’t put them back together as a restoration project patterned after our former selves. Instead, he sifts through the rubble and selects some of the shards as raw material for another project – a mosaic that tells the story of redemption.”
Kent says this leads to a new kind of living – “harder, but better in some ways, than before. Maddening because we hate the process but richer because of the pain.”
This gives me such hope and anticipation for the work that God is doing in our family. I am not just eager to see the end result, (for I believe that won’t come until we see Christ face to face.) but rather, excited to be in the process. Embracing this new journey that will tell the wonderful story of God’s redemption.
I will continue to blog about the book as I work my way through it.
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